Crowd rallies to back education as lawmakers weigh options

By Cy Ryan

Monday, April 11, 2011 | 2:52 p.m.

CARSON CITY – Nevada's Senate majority leader said he thinks the school day and the school year should be longer while a freshman lawmaker wants to funnel more money into the classroom and away from “bloated” administrations.

While lawmakers search for solutions to problems tied to education, a crowd estimated at 250, most of them teachers, demonstrated outside the legislative building in Carson City in support of more money for public schools.

Speakers urged lawmakers not “to balance the budget on the backs of teachers” and to raise taxes. Participants carried signs with messages such as “Our kids deserve better,” “Tax mines, not minds” and “Save education.”

In an earlier hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-North Las Vegas pushed Senate Bill 372 to divert $221 million out of the budget of Gov. Brian Sandoval and shift the funds to after-school and summer school programs and early education.

This money was approved in an initiative petition to increase the hotel-motel room tax in Clark and Washoe counties in 2009 for the purpose of funding education. Horsford complained that the governor had wiped the money out of education and put it into the state’s general fund to balance the budget.

He said a program should be started for students who don’t receive a diploma in four years to get additional instruction and gain a degree. This would be a "second chance" for them, he said.

Horsford also said lawmakers should consider lengthening the school day and year.

Sen. Barbara Cegavske, R-Las Vegas, questioned the cost of lengthening the school year, also saying the governor did not sweep all of the room tax money from education.

Freshman Sen. Michael Roberson, R-Las Vegas, noted the tight financial situation of the state, but said cuts should not be made in the classroom. He said the Clark County School District, the nation's fifth-largest school district, also has the fifth-largest bureaucracy in the country.

School districts now put 57.3 percent of their money into instruction and Roberson wants to boost that to 65 percent. There has been an increase in education spending, Roberson said, but there has not been an increase in student performance.

Roberson said his Senate Bill 316 is not perfect, but “65 percent is better than doing nothing.” He called the administration in Clark County "bloated," but his bill ran into opposition from lobbyists for school boards and teachers.

Craig Stevens, representing the teachers’ Nevada State Education Association, said the state needs to put more money into the system and not take money from one pot and put it into another.

Dotty Merrill, representing the Nevada Association of School Boards, opposed the bill.

There were questions about whether books, nursing services and food would be included among classroom expenditures.

Sen. Mo Denis, D-Las Vegas, said teachers need books and computers for the students to learn.

Meanwhile, the Assembly passed Assembly Bill 229 to expand the probationary period for teachers to three years, up from the current two years. The bill requires school districts to set up a system of performance pay. It now goes to the Senate.